


Is a Better Home Awaiting?

by sunlightsmarrow



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 15:37:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12634047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlightsmarrow/pseuds/sunlightsmarrow
Summary: Special Agent Holden Ford comforts a little girl whose parents fell victim to a murder-suicide. He takes it poorly.





	Is a Better Home Awaiting?

**Author's Note:**

> First work in this fandom. Hopefully you like it!

The child was still alive. She was shaking and covered in her mother and father’s blood and her eyes were huge and full of tears. By the time Holden got there, she was sitting on the couch as law enforcement scurried around and the coroner took measurements. Holden had passed through the officer at the door and it took him about five seconds before he saw her. The carpet made awful sounds under his shoes. He didn’t care about his soiled pants as he knelt before the little girl. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was.

“Hey, sweetie,” began Holden. He ran his hands up the sides of the chair, blocking her in and filling her view. “Would you like to go outside for a little while?” The agent reached out his hand and the little girl took it, her tiny fingers only able to wrap around two of his. She must not have been four years old. He held her to the side so that she didn’t see the worst of it, but she pulled back hard enough that Holden made the executive decision to pick her up and take her outside. She squirmed and cried for her mother, and as she wriggled in his grip, her dress hiked up and he saw the scars on her legs. In a moment of natural instinct, he pulled her close. 

“It’s okay, Becca.” The social worker would be at the house soon. Once he had settled on the porch swing and began to rock she hugged him in a visceral grip and wailed. Her cries shook him and he held her, trying to figure out how to calm her.

He was on the second verse when he realized he was singing to her. He rocked to the beat with her until she had cried herself dry. She still whimpered in his arms, but her little arms weren’t strangling him anymore. He understood her anger and her agony. He had seen it enough on adults, but nothing was as powerful as seeing the righteous indignation and anger of children. The conditions surrounding her orphanhood were going to have to wait. He could hear her heartbeat start to slow in the rhythm of his tune 

Soon the car arrived. Special Agent Holden Ford rested the child back on his lap. He carefully brushed her tears away and said in a soft voice, “You are very brave, Becca. This nice woman is going to take care of you for a little while. It’s okay. She won’t hurt you.” 

The social worker took Becca away. Holden watched her get into the car and look forlornly at the house. But there was nothing for her to love there anymore, and somehow she seemed to know that, because when the car drove away, she didn’t look back.

~~~

Holden came home to Debbie that night more exhausted than he’d ever felt. He sank onto the mattress. Debbie wordlessly came into the room and began to undress her boyfriend. He stood to draw himself a bath, but she pushed him down, grabbed a bottle of oils from the bed, and headed into the bathroom. 

“You must have seen some shit today, Holden. I’ll take care of you. I’m ahead on my thesis anyway.” 

Always sounding judgmental and always sounding like he was the second thing on her mind, but he was glad to come back to her warm body and her gentle kisses and her fundamental kindness. She had to rouse him for his bath and the sound he made when he plunged into the aromatic water could never be repeated, but she helped him bathe and towelled him off and soon they could hold each other into the night.

~~~

The next morning, Bill was at his desk with miraculously good coffee. He even told Holden to go home after he took him to lunch. Once Holden kicked off his shoes, he fell onto the lumpy couch in the incensed apartment and stared at a blank television screen until his consciousness slipped from him.


End file.
